


Stormy Weather

by JaceRMontague



Series: 30k in 30 days [15]
Category: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (TV)
Genre: F/F, it rains, regina hates emma for a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:23:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8569495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaceRMontague/pseuds/JaceRMontague
Summary: Emma loses her key just as a storm rolls in, her best friend can't bring a spare key for another few hours and so Emma is left standing outside her house in the torrential rain. Her saving grace may just be her neighbour Regina Mills - the woman who has hated Emma for the last two years.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this will probably end up being a short multi-chap? maybe one more chapter? Im not sure yet. It's also probably riddled with errors because i'm so tired and have even tried to proof read this but hope you like it anyway :)

Emma watched as the clouds darkened to the point that they were almost black. She watched as the first drops of rain fell slowly, big and heavy but slow; slow enough that Emma could get from the bus stop to her front door and only catch a few drops.

After five minutes of rummaging through her bag she watched her neighbour get into their car and leave. Emma had her neighbour, Regina, had never really gotten along. Emma didn’t know why. Actually, she was lying to herself. About two years ago, Emma had purposely blasted her music throughout the entire house, and had only turned up louder when Regina had knocked on the door and asked Emma to turn it down. She only turned the music off at 5:30 am the next just as she was about to leave the house. Due to her upbringing Emma, had taught herself to sleep through anything and so she had slept through concert-volume music all night just to wind up the drop dead gorgeous brunette next door. At the beginning of her sunrise run she had looked at Regina’s house and had seen the woman pacing across the window, looking utterly sleep deprived and cradling a crying new-born.  Emma didn’t think she had ever felt like such a shitty person in her entire life. She tried to apologise later in the day, waiting for Regina to open the door to check her post to ensure she didn’t wake the baby by knocking but the door was shut in her face. Emma was firm in her belief that if it wasn’t for the fact the brunette was holding the sleeping child the door would have been slammed firmly.

 Then Emma watched as the rain turned from slow, heavy droplets into what could only really be called a monsoon. She watched as the water began creeping up the edge of the step, barely noticeable if it weren’t for the fact that Emma had been staring at the ground. When she had decided that the ground was boring her she looked back up at the sky.

Emma felt the rain pour down on her and then pour down some more. The storm showed no signs of stopping and the only moments Emma wasn’t listening to and watching the rain was when she was listening to the thunder and watching the lightening as it struck the town around her at a scarily fast pace while it was getting incredibly close to the location Emma was standing.

Emma knew that the chance of her being struck by lightning was 1 in 96,000 in a year; 1 in 12,000 in her lifetime but standing there watching it strike fast and close made her worry.

Emma didn’t remember learning the chances of being struck by lightning but then again, she didn’t remember learning that the chances of winning the Powerball was 292,201,338 or that the chances of being crushed by a vending machine was 1 in 12,000,000 but she did. She just absorbed statistics. Always had done. She knew, in vague terms, that the probability of this storm becoming a concern-worthy flood was incredibly low.

She also knew that she had no means of getting into her house and was praying that the next two hours would pass by quickly – she had texted her best friend Ruby that she had lost her keys because Ruby owned the only other spare key but Ruby was at work for the next hour and a half. In this rain, it would take her half an hour to get from her work at her Grandmother’s diner to Emma’s house.

Emma was freezing. She whittled away forty minutes by counting the seconds between lightning strikes and thunder crashes, and by plotting the next chapter – or four – of the novel she was working on.

After that, Emma was officially bored senseless. She was tired, cold to the point that it had begun to actually hurt while simultaneously turning numb, soaked through – her coat had only held out the rain for the first five minutes and she was shivering. Emma was certain her lips were turning blue. If they hadn’t already done so.

After twenty more minutes Emma had resorted to standing with her arms wrapped around her torso, bouncing on her feet in an attempt to keep herself warm. She was muttering at herself in anger; if she had got the tyre on her car replaced when she was told it needed replacing eighteen months ago instead of waiting until it was completely unusable on her way home that day, if she carried enough change to get the bus back into the town so she could sit somewhere dry until Ruby was free, if she hadn’t lost her keys in the first place, then she wouldn’t be standing outside her own house on the day of the heaviest rainfall of the year.

Just as Emma was contemplating giving up on waiting for Ruby and throwing a brick through her own lounge window just to get out of the rain, Regina pulled up.

This halted any and all plans Emma had about breaking into her own home, Regina already hated her, she didn’t need to give the woman a reason to think she was crazy and desperate too.

Emma bowed her head, not wanting to make eye contact with the brunette. Ever since the day she had attempted an apology for her music she and Regina hadn’t spoke, they had barely even seen one another; mainly because their schedules didn’t align and so they had no reason to see one another outside of the house, and partly because at first Emma was incredibly embarrassed and had avoided Regina; going grocery shopping when she knew the brunette was at work or in her house – leaving no chance at meeting in the store and now it had been two years of awkward, embarrassed avoidance and Emma didn’t know how to change that.

Emma shivered as the wind picked up and continued bouncing on her feet,

‘Come on Henry’ she managed to hear Regina say over the wind.

Emma watched through lashes and soaked hair as Regina lifted the toddler out of the car and rushed to the front door. Emma watched as the two disappeared inside their warm house and went back to watching the rain. She watched as it bounced off the top of Regina’s car.

The rain somehow got heavier and Emma had to return to looking at the ground because the rain was actually stinging her face. She watched as the water continued to rise slightly up the side of the step and sighed, watching her breath turn to steam.

"Miss Swan"

Emma startled at the sound of her name. She looked up, sodden and squinting because of the rain lashing her face.

In front of her stood Regina, dressed appropriately in a long rain coat and holding a large black umbrella over herself and her son who was dressed in a Paddington bear style red raincoat and was cuddled close to his mother's neck.

"Re- Ms Mills." Emma stuttered out. Between the cold and the shock that Regina was not only looking at her but had initiated the conversation they appeared to be having, Emma was surprised she hadn't passed out.

"Would you care to join Henry and I inside? Until you get a spare key?"

"How did you-" Emma was about to ask how did Regina know she didn't have a key until she realised that that was a stupid question.

"Miss Swan."

"I prefer Emma."

"Miss Swan. You have been standing out here since before I left to collect my son from his grandparents. And I know some people like the rain but standing out here for so long is simply preposterous."

Emma was about to argue but as soon as she opened her mouth to interject she was cut off by Regina giving her a pointed glare and continuing to talk.

"Now. I am offering you this. And you can either accept and join us or you can stay out here and wait in the rain and cold. But Henry and I will not be staying with you." Regina concludes pointedly, with a look that practically screamed "if my son gets even a sniffle because you're too busy hesitating, I will kill you"

Emma gave a smile and a nod and then followed Regina to the brunette’s porch. She could feel the weight of the water actually slowing her down. Emma was certain that her clothes held half her body weight at least in water.

Emma paused in Regina's porch, not wanting to ruin the brunettes home with her soaking clothes. Between the Mercedes, the fine clothes and the fact that the porch was decked out with a white marble floor and pure oak furnishings, Emma was certain Regina's house would be show-room worthy and she didn't want to drip water all over the brunette’s home and give Regina another reason to hate her. Especially not now they appeared to be making some form of progress.

"Wait here" Regina said before she rushed off, Henry still wrapped around her.

While Regina was gone, Emma spelled off her shoes and socks as well as her coat. She was contemplating whether to take her jumper off and just stay in her tank shirt when Regina returned, without Henry, holding towels, a t-shirt, some jogging bottoms, a hoodie and a pair of fluffy socks. If anybody had asked her she would have denied with all her heart that she owned such items but she was certain that Emma wouldn't fit into any of her other clothes - Regina had seen Emma running most mornings and knew that Emma had muscles she envied.

She passed the towels to Emma and once Emma had one draped around her shoulders and one wrapped around her hair, Regina handed Emma the clothes and gave the blonde the directions to the bathroom.

"There's more towels in the cabinet in the bathroom if you need them. Put the ones you've used in the wash basket. Bring your clothes out, I'll dry them for you" Regina said as she stepped it of Emma's way so the blonde could change.

Emma thanked Regina before disappearing into the bathroom and locking the door behind her. She dried herself off the best she could and then changed into Regina's clothes. She couldn't quite wrap her head around the fact that the two of them hadn't spoken in two years and now she was stood in Regina's bathroom wearing the other woman's clothes. Of course, she knew that it was only because her own clothes liked as if she had jumped into the ocean while wearing them and that Regina probably only invited Emma in because she felt sorry for her, or didn't want to be a bad neighbour, of wanted to be a good role model for her son, or something. But still. She was in Regina Mills' house wearing Regina Mills' clothes.

After twenty minutes of drying off and changing, Emma emerged from the bathroom, she had left the towels in the wash basket as requested and was now trying to find Regina. She heard Henry babbling happily about dinosaurs and magic spells and followed his little voice to a play room. Emma smiled at the sight of Regina sitting cross legged on the floor with her son siting on her lap creating magic spells to make a bright orange trex fly "bigger then the clouds, momma!" Regina gently corrected Henry's sentence and then looked up to find a slightly less sodden Emma standing in the door way

"I didn't mean to watch, sorry, I just didn't want to interrupt either" Emma said shyly, a slight blush creeping up her neck at being caught watching the little family in front of her.

"No, it's okay." Regina confirmed before lifting Henry gently and placing him on the ground, surrounded by his toys. She stood and walked over to the blonde, taking the sopping wet clothes out of Emma's hands.

"Mama play!" Henry shouted gleefully, wanting Regina to sit back down and play dinosaurs with him again.

"In a minute, munchkin. Momma's going to dry Emma's clothes and make some coco" Regina said softly, smiling at her son. Emma couldn't help but notice how Regina's eyes softened whenever she looked at the little boy who was staring back at her.

"Henry have coco milk?" The little boy asked hopefully

"Of course you can have chocolate milk, Henry."

The little boy cheered before regarding his mother once more. He looked at her as if he had a pressing question but deflated a little when he looked at Emma. As quick as he had deflated he had bounced back and met his mother's eyes again.

"Can Emmy play?"

Regina was startled. Her son rarely took to strangers but here he was, asking if their neighbour, who the young boy had rarely seen before, could play Dinomagic with him.

Regina looked at the blonde standing a little behind her. Emma looked slightly started herself but she met Regina's eyes and offered the brunette a small shrug, a smile and a hopeful look that practically screamed "let me do this"

Regina was certain that Emma only wanted to look after Henry because she felt embarrassed about being caught in the rain, or perhaps the blonde had remembered the time she had kept a three-day old Henry awake all night long with heavy bass.

Regina nodded her agreement to Emma before turning back to her son who had discarded the Orange trex for a little pink plastic velociraptor and his wizard toy.

"Yes pumpkin, Emma can play"

Henry cheered once more and patted the carpet next to him for Emma to sit down beside him.

Emma obliged and sat next to the toddler, picking up a triceratops and asking Henry what spell would be best to make the dinosaur become the world’s best dancer. She grinned as the little boy giggled at the request.

Regina watched how easily Henry had engaged with Emma and left the room, still slightly uncertain about the arrangement but comforted in the fact that the diving wall between the kitchen and Henry's you toy was in fact two glass doors.

 

Regina threw Emma's clothes into the dryer and made the hot chocolate, adding cinnamon to hers before returning to the toy room with mugs of hot chocolate for herself and Emma and a Sippy cup of chocolate milk for Henry.

"Mama" Henry almost shouted, completely enjoying his game of Dinomagic with Emma.

"Yes, Henry?" Regina said softy.

"Emmys my best friend!"

"Is that so?" Regina asked with a genuine smile

"Uh Huh" Henry nodded furiously with a grin

"I guess that means you two need another play date soon then?"

As much as Regina had held against Emma for keeping entry awake two years ago, seeing her son grin the way he was would be worth her putting her grudge aside.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, all comments, kudos and prompts are more than welcome and i appreciate them all!!
> 
> I hope you all have a wonderful night/day (its 01:44 as I type this (but im changing the date so i have a story for every day of the month) so im about to have a wonderful sleep now, but i hope no matter what time zone you're in you have a wonderful time.)


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